poured down their open throats any paragraph that she might choose
to select from the stirring ones of the period. When she had done
with the sheet Mrs. Garland passed it on to the miller, the miller
to the grinder, and the grinder to the grinder's boy, in whose hands
it became subdivided into half pages, quarter pages, and irregular
triangles, and ended its career as a paper cap, a flagon bung, or a
wrapper for his bread and cheese.

Notwithstanding his compact with Mrs. Garland, old Mr. Derriman kept
the paper so long, and was so chary of wasting his man's time on a
merely intellectual errand, that unless she sent for the journal it
seldom reached her hands. Anne was always her messenger. The
arrival of the soldiers led Mrs. Garland to despatch her daughter
for it the day after the party; and away she went in her hat and
pelisse, in a direction at right angles to that of the encampment on
the hill.

Walking across the fields for the distance of a mile or two, she
came out upon the high-road by a wicket-gate. On the other side of
the way was the entrance to what at first sight looked like a
neglected meadow, the gate being a rotten one, without a bottom
rail, and broken-down palings lying on each side. The dry hard mud
of the opening was marked with several horse and cow tracks, that
had been half obliterated by fifty score sheep tracks, surcharged
with the tracks of a man and a dog. Beyond this geological record
appeared a carriage-road, nearly grown over with grass, which Anne
followed. It descended by a gentle slope, dived under dark-rinded
elm and chestnut trees, and conducted her on till the hiss of a
waterfall and the sound of the sea became audible, when it took a
bend round a swamp of fresh watercress and brooklime that had once